I don't know about you guys but in all realistic scenarios I'll probably be bugging in. I have all my supplies here and know the lay of the land. However, if power/water is out and toilets aren't an option I think most of us will be relying on plastic buckets. For those of us in more urban areas, it's more of a challenge, as we can't simply setup an outhouse (a bit difficult in townhouse/apartment communities). I know toilet paper is a common prep item but that's only half the equation.

Today I was walking my dog and realized the tightly wrapped plastic dog poop bags would work amazingly well during a bug-in, as with my dog I pick up the mess and tie the small plastic bag off. This goes a LONG way in reducing the smell. They're pretty inexpensive to literally get hundreds if not a thousand or two bags (<$10). Anyone else use these or have better ideas? I figure use the doggy ones for each "use" and then wrap them up in a larger garbage bag that can be untied to refill.

I know, a pretty $*** topic but hey, bugging in could be a pretty smelly situation.

"For me, it is better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
Carl Sagan

I've thought about this before and here's a couple of things to add to consider.

1. As a considerate dog owner, and someone who's used those same bags to pickup raccoon 5#!+ on my deck, and as a lifelong defecator myself. Dog stuff is the least stinky stuff IMO. You should test out those baggies for realz. And to see if you can hit it on the first shot. Nothing but net. And putting the used baggies in those 5 gal buckets w/lid will hold in the stench a little as long as they are outside in the wind and not in direct sunlight. [as temp storage] And once in a sealed baggie they won't decompose until the bag is broken, so what's the plan for long term?

2. During a PAW when water and sewer go down there will be many people using the "manually fill the tank and it will flush" technique. And this will work for higher altitude gravity actuated sewer systems, for a while. But when the pipes fill up and back up there may be backflow into the homes, businesses and apartment buildings. [you may be safe on the 20 floor but if you've got 20 floors doing that, the first floor will be flooded with sewage.] That actually happened once in an apt complex I lived in many years ago, the pipe got clogged and every time someone in an upper floor turned on the tap or flushed, sewage came out the shower drains and sinks on the first floor. It wasn't my building, it was the one across the parking lot thank the Lord.

ETA: I'm in S FL, not much slope here, so we have electric pumping stations all over the place to move our stuff. When those go down peeeyouuu.

When lived off FOB in Iraq we would poop in bags and throw them in the trash. There was no functioning sewer system. There was raw untreated sewage everywhere in the poor neighborhoods on the streets. It stank but you got used to it. The US gave billions of dollars to local sheikhs to build sewer systems who instead spent the money buying hookers, guns and HME.

When the trash was full we would take it outside the compound and throw it in a dumpster and set it on fire. We had to stay there while it burned. If we didn't the kids would jump in the burning dumpster looking for items of value to salvage or anything edible. At some point we came up with the bright idea of handing out a couple of MREs and water bottles to the urchins to keep them out of the burning dumpster. I am sure you can guess what happened next. The next time the number of kids doubled, then doubled again after that. We had to stop burning for about a week to get the crowd down and of course stop handing out food and water.

The more you can separate pee and poop, the easier it is to control the smell.
The two together make a much more potent aroma.

In my day, we didn't have virtual reality.
If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.
-
Preps buy us time. Time to learn how and time to remember how. Time to figure out what is a want, what is a need.

Dirt can help. I would prefer to dig a mini outhouse in my backyard... dig a three foot hole, cut a hole in a 5 gallon bucket (to be the seat as the bucket will be upside down), place bucket over mini hole, and layer poop and dirt. When hole starts to refill, start a new one. Not a bad plan in my mind for 1 or 2 people.

Or just layer dirt from the backyard in the poop bucket if you wanna poop inside.

Or, just dump sewage waste directly into the sewage pipe of a home. I wanna normally they are near the laundry room in modern home.

So here's a coninkidink. My HOA newsletter published this month a bit on what I was mentioning before. The dangers of using the city sewer system when there is no power.

This is appropriate for any sewer infrastructure that is not a gravity powered but electricity powered system. Like here in Florida. The power may be out but the water will still flow. So you can do dishes, and flush toilets, bathe, etc.

I've been thinking about a way to install a valve to cut off my house from the system because I know this is an issue and can stop putting water down the drains, but even with this article being distributed to our neighborhood, I also know for the most part it will be ignored. I also know that the CITY sets up the generators on the lift stations within 24 hrs, but I don't know that in any long term emergency other than a localized hurricane power outage, if those generators will get refueled before the water gets cut/shut off.

So here's a coninkidink. My HOA newsletter published this month a bit on what I was mentioning before. The dangers of using the city sewer system when there is no power.

This is appropriate for any sewer infrastructure that is not a gravity powered but electricity powered system. Like here in Florida. The power may be out but the water will still flow. So you can do dishes, and flush toilets, bathe, etc.

I've been thinking about a way to install a valve to cut off my house from the system because I know this is an issue and can stop putting water down the drains, but even with this article being distributed to our neighborhood, I also know for the most part it will be ignored. I also know that the CITY sets up the generators on the lift stations within 24 hrs, but I don't know that in any long term emergency other than a localized hurricane power outage, if those generators will get refueled before the water gets cut/shut off.

It is easy to put in either a check valve which allows the water to flow one way or a a manual valve that you would actuate. While easy, it is not cheap and will require excavation of your sewage line, city permits, inspections, etc. Think $3,000 + in cost.

One alternative expedient is to get some plugs for the sinks and drains on the ground floor. At the appropriate time use these plugs to block the drains and toilets to prevent back flow. Obviously your house drainage will be inoperative until these plugs are removed. This could cause a backup into the house so shut off all the water at that point also.

The sewerage will still overflow downstream of you but should not flood your house.

The other thing you could do if the sewer clean out is below the level of the lowest drain is to open up this access plate and let the sewerage exit there. That would work well with a raised house but again the clean out has to be lower than your lowest drain in side.

Letting sewerage vent outside is not good but it beats the shit out of drains overflowing with sewerage inside.

Sewerage/water flows to the lowest point all you need is an exit point for it that is lower than the toilet bowl, sink or God forbid a floor drain.

It is easy to put in either a check valve which allows the water to flow one way or a a manual valve that you would actuate. While easy, it is not cheap and will require excavation of your sewage line, city permits, inspections, etc. Think $3,000 + in cost.

One alternative expedient is to get some plugs for the sinks and drains on the ground floor. At the appropriate time use these plugs to block the drains and toilets to prevent back flow. Obviously your house drainage will be inoperative until these plugs are removed. This could cause a backup into the house so shut off all the water at that point also.

The sewerage will still overflow downstream of you but should not flood your house.

The other thing you could do if the sewer clean out is below the level of the lowest drain is to open up this access plate and let the sewerage exit there. That would work well with a raised house but again the clean out has to be lower than your lowest drain in side.

Letting sewerage vent outside is not good but it beats the shit out of drains overflowing with sewerage inside.

Sewerage/water flows to the lowest point all you need is an exit point for it that is lower than the toilet bowl, sink or God forbid a floor drain.

Yeah, that's about what I ran into when researching it a couple years ago. The clean out is right next to my front door and basically 1" lower than the foundation. So probably lower than the lowest drain point, but not by much. Flat South Florida. I even thought about constructing a plug to just manually jam in there. Probably an inflatable air bladder. Haven't gotten that far yet.

My house isn't really higher or lower than any other house in the neighborhood that i can tell. And I'm sort of midway between two lift stations, but my house is probably one of the farthest from either of them. I think that is a good thing.

What I didn't do was research whether the Water/Utilities will shut of the water if they can't keep the gennies running on the lift stations for an extended period of time. The Utilities dept here is great about setting them up after a hurricane, they are in place before I even get down the street usually. But I figure there will still be the 'smart' ones who dump buckets of pool water in their toilets to have working facilities even after the water gets cut off. But that's after a hurricane type of business as usual, not some other TEOTWAWKI event.

Here's an example of one PBC Utilities dept facility. Wakodahatchee. See all the generators in their parking lot? [I go to those Wetlands sometimes which is part of the water reclamation cycle here.]

It is easy to put in either a check valve which allows the water to flow one way or a a manual valve that you would actuate. While easy, it is not cheap and will require excavation of your sewage line, city permits, inspections, etc. Think $3,000 + in cost.

One alternative expedient is to get some plugs for the sinks and drains on the ground floor. At the appropriate time use these plugs to block the drains and toilets to prevent back flow. Obviously your house drainage will be inoperative until these plugs are removed. This could cause a backup into the house so shut off all the water at that point also.

The sewerage will still overflow downstream of you but should not flood your house.

The other thing you could do if the sewer clean out is below the level of the lowest drain is to open up this access plate and let the sewerage exit there. That would work well with a raised house but again the clean out has to be lower than your lowest drain in side.

Letting sewerage vent outside is not good but it beats the shit out of drains overflowing with sewerage inside.

Sewerage/water flows to the lowest point all you need is an exit point for it that is lower than the toilet bowl, sink or God forbid a floor drain.

Backflow preventers (which is what those one-way valves are called) don't always have to be installed on the main line to protect your house. Before I retired I had a client who had sewage back up and flood her finished basement after storms had knocked out power to her area and caused some local flooding. In her case the overflow came in through their washing machine drain in the basement laundry room. I suggested a backflow preventer be installed on that drain line (would have cost her under $100 and taken me all of 20 minutes to install one) but she opted not to. Total damage to the house was considerable. I ended up replacing a lot of drywall, paneling and framing down there, while all the carpet and furniture was a total loss.

Fast forward 2 years and they have a brand new leather sectional with power recliners (about $5k), new big screen home entertainment system with surround sound (another $8k), custom woven wall to wall carpeting (they didn't want to tell me the price but one of my guys who used to do that stuff for a living said it was likely over $60 per sq.ft. and the basement was about 900 sq.ft.), custom pool table (about $10k), and a bunch of other goodies when it happens a second time, same reason. Again, I offer to install a backflow preventer in that line, this time on my dime, and again they decline. They then had me redo everything I'd done the last time, including rewiring the entire basement, had me put down ceramic tile in the majority of the basement and black granite tile with glow-in-the-dark grout in the husband's home office down there, and called it good. That was the last job I worked on before retiring. As far as I know they still don't have a backflow preventer on that line.

The point here though is that if they did have one on that line the next highest point at which sewage could spill from was upstairs on the main level, well above the sewer line which would have backed up into the street before it could reach that height. If any of you can do this on your own property it's certinly cheaper than excavating and installing one on the main line.

Backflow preventers (which is what those one-way valves are called) don't always have to be installed on the main line to protect your house.

Good point. We do not have basements in my area but I had forgotten that backflow preventers are common in basement bathrooms.

MacWa77ace wrote:
The clean out is right next to my front door and basically 1" lower than the foundation. So probably lower than the lowest drain point, but not by much. Flat South Florida.

What you could do is figure where the lowest drain(s) are located and install backflow preventers there. As part of the process, open up the sewerage clean out (maybe get some kind of flexible hose like an RV uses to direct the outflow away from the front door) in a post hurricane situation. The backflow preventers would make it more likely that any backup would flow out the clean out hatch. While not ideal it beats cleaning sewerage overflows inside the house, especially if you can redirect the effluent away from the house.

I have two sewer clean outs and the lowest one in already in the front yard near the city drain. We have similar issues with pump stations losing power. My plan has always been to remove the cover to the lowest clean out and simply let it exit there. The next clean out is still below the lowest drain in the house. So if effluent started backup up through the front I had planned to open the rear one. Like I said not a great plan but it should prevent the backup from entering the house.

Now the pool house has floor drains and is lower than the second clean out (don't ask me how I know ) but after an unfortunate incident it was redone so it can be hosed out without any water/effluent damage. So some bleach and a water hose is the only damage control needed there. Nope no check valve in those drains since it did not not occur to me to get them installed.

Backflow preventers (which is what those one-way valves are called) don't always have to be installed on the main line to protect your house.

Good point. We do not have basements in my area but I had forgotten that backflow preventers are common in basement bathrooms.

MacWa77ace wrote:
The clean out is right next to my front door and basically 1" lower than the foundation. So probably lower than the lowest drain point, but not by much. Flat South Florida.

What you could do is figure where the lowest drain(s) are located and install backflow preventers there. As part of the process, open up the sewerage clean out (maybe get some kind of flexible hose to direct the outflow away from the front door) in a post hurricane situation. The backflow preventers would make it more likely that any backup would flow out the clean out hatch. While not ideal it beats cleaning sewerage overflows inside the house, especially if you can redirect the effluent away from the house.

I have two sewer clean outs and the lowest one in already in the front yard near the city drain. We have similar issues with pump stations losing power. My plan has always been to remove the cover to the lowest clean out and simply let it exit there. The next clean out is still below the lowest drain in the house. So if effluent started backup up through the front I had planned to open the rear one. Like I said not a great plan but it should prevent the backup front entering the house.

Yeah, we're taking inches of slope here. Probably 8-12 inches to the main branch in the house and then <3 feet to the main sewer line from the house, and than another 2-3' slope to get to the nearest lift station a half mile away. [I'm guessing]

I think the shower in the back bathroom is the lowest at about 1-2" lower than the toilet in that room. I'd have to put a plug in that shower as accessing the pipes to add that backflow preventer would mean going under the concrete foundation. Unless I'm not understanding.

Another concern is that the seal on the toilet drain may not hold against backflow, and sewage could come out from under the commode if I plug the showers/baths. [My washer drain is about 3' above the ground.] I've been in this house 12 years and never lifted the bowls, [who knows how many years before that they were sealed] and the one in the master bath is a tiny bit wobbly.

Good idea though, My cleanout is an internally threaded ~6" female PVC with a male thread in cap. I can probably find an adaptor that I can screw in and then mount a vinyl flex hose. I don't know of any adaptors that won't raise the level of the cleanout above the lowest toilet drain though. I was also thinking a sump type pump lowered into the cleanout might work.